


bone-fide winter

by VerdantMoth



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Bucky Barnes Feels, Christmas, Christmas Decorations, DIY Christmas Decorations, Deaf Clint Barton, Established Relationship, Found Family, HOH Clint Barton, Happy Ending, Katie-Dog - Freeform, M/M, Post-Apocalypse, Questionable Things Used as Decoration, Winter, clint gets a dog, puppy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:20:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22053181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VerdantMoth/pseuds/VerdantMoth
Summary: “Paper,” he grouses. Aside from boot trodden scraps and books like this, or the faded, torn adverts in windows, Clint cant remember the last time he saw a sheet of useable paper. He certainly can’t recall a time when paper was common enough to be wasted folding into pretty shapes.Still, there are enough image inserts, enough diagrams, he can do this without paper.Maybe.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Clint Barton
Comments: 10
Kudos: 56
Collections: Winterhawk Wonderland





	bone-fide winter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [elenorasweet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elenorasweet/gifts).



> Merry (late) Christmas! This was so much fun to write!

Clint had stumbled across the book back in what they were figuring equated to June. At least, it was summer time- as much as it ever was anymore. At the time, it’d been a bit of a petty impulse. The constant warring of “light load, ready to move,” and “just want one nice thing!”

Now, now he is glad he kept it. The paperback book with its cheery-despite-the-fade cover is rumpled around the edges. Sweat and mud from being tucked into his waistband, bent in places from this harsh new world.

Bucky is out. Getting food or wood or scrounging for winter gear not blasted to bits or worse. 

Clint thumbs it open, studying the shapes. They’re so intricate, so delicate, the sight of them makes his chest ache for memories he never made. 

“Paper,” he grouses. Aside from boot trodden scraps and books like this, or the faded, torn adverts in windows, Clint cant remember the last time he saw a sheet of useable paper. He certainly can’t recall a time when paper was common enough to be wasted folding into pretty shapes. 

Still, there are enough image inserts, enough diagrams, he can do this without paper. 

Maybe.

Clint begins digging around the little hovel they’ve set up shop in, looking for bits and pieces and spare parts that don’t have much purpose. What he finds are bits of steel wire, too small for any real project, cracked shards of metal, and a whole helluva lot of bone. 

Bucky would know what animal each bone belonged to. 

If they belonged to an animal at all. 

Bucky would know without even trying; Clint could tell if he wanted to. If they were tracking dinner or running from a scouter. 

Point being, he could tell, but right now he doesn’t wanna. 

He gathers the supplies he’s rescued, borrows Bucky’s seventeenth least favorite sharp object, and sets to work.

-

As with all things these days, Clint’s instinct is the thing that has him quietly packing away his project and stomping over to the fire pit.

Instinct, and the dying light croaking through the logs of their hovelhome. He’d bet his last wool socks the logs will be a nice, glowy red by the time Bucky trudges in. 

He’s right. And in the time between the roaring flames and now, he’s managed to clear up a surface to eat on, scrounge up their dried roots, open a bit of the stock he and Bucky had found a few towns back, and worked some greens into a broth. 

Bucky calls the greens spices, but Clint thinks that’s just to make eating them more appealing. 

“Smells good,” Bucky grunts loud as he can. 

Clint doesn’t quite hide his laugh. “You don’t.” 

Bucky lands in their rickety chair with a hard thunk. The wooden slats groan under his weight, and Clint winces right along with it. Anything that loud to his own ears...

When he turns, his mouth dips down. Bucky looks tired. 

And not in the world-weary way everyone looks now. 

Bucky’s eyes, so pale they’re almost empty, are rimmed in heavy purples and dark, bruised greens. Like all the colors of winter leached from the world have somehow worked their way into his skin. He’s skinny. Gaunt. Sharp cheeks, pronounced chin split cavernously, shoulders cutting even through the oversized coat. 

He doesn’t even unpack his rusack. Bucky sits there, ice melting at his feet and his bag dripping on his lap. His chin jerks a few times before Clint takes pity.

Clint steps forward, peeling the thick layers of patched-up wool off of Bucky, tugging the scarf from his neck. He grabs the rusack, setting it by the stove for now, and shuffles for the lone bowl of “clean” water. The one they never eat from, anyway.

Bucky hums at him when Clint begins wiping between his fingers. Clint feels the movement of his voice, and knows to look up. Bucky speaks as Clint works on his wrist. “Warm.”

“You’re welcome,” Clint snarks back. Bucky cracks an eye open and tugs his hand away from Clint. He presses a damp palm to Clint’s cheek, strokes with a callus-padded skeletal finger. 

“How far today?” Clint asks.

Those glacier eyes harden. “Come spring, we gotta move again,” Bucky says as gently as he can. 

Clint bites his cheek to hold his sigh in. He likes this place, with its gaping, drafty walls and it’s lack of space. But he knew this was coming. They’d had three solid winters here. That’s the longest they’ve ever been settled. “Well, that spring’s problem. Tonight’s problem is getting you fed and into bed.” 

“Not hungry,” Bucky groans, careful to keep his lips tilted towards Clint.

“Not an option,” Clint reminds him. He doesn’t make Bucky get up from the chair though. Clint makes quick work of the rabbits. He sets the fur aside, for Bucky to deal with in the morning, and starts picking out usable meat. 

He quietly sets larger, less shattered bones to the side too, dumping the unusable fragments into the pot. Marrow, or flavoring, or whatever. 

Bucky knows to tread carefully when Clint is left to handle meals. 

-

Bucky jerks when the bowl is set before him. It smells…

It smells like food, which isn’t to say it smells good.

But at least he won’t have to go out for a few days. He should tell Clint to dry some of the rabbits though. Practicality. 

“How’d you fare?” He asks. Clint's eyes are always half on his lips, but he still tries to raise his voice.

Clint grins at him, bright in the grim of the dying day. “Six cans of pumpkin pie filling!” 

Bucky winces, and Clint’s face doesn’t so much fall, as it does shutter. Bucky takes a large mouthful of ‘soup,’ rolling it carefully in his mouth for bone. “S’pose that’s good. Can’t remember if pumpkin is a fruit or vegetable, but it’ll have vitamins.”

Clint sighs, eyes downcast. “I got other stuff too Buck. That’s just the best of the haul. Lots of dented beans and peas and carrots. So many carrots. Enough carrots to bring these rabbits back to life.”

Bucky nods, waiting until Clint looks back up.. “Good haul.” 

Clint says nothing for a while as he stirs his murky broth. “When can I go out for you?”

Bucky shakes his head at Clint, at the old argument. “Can you hear that?”

Clint cocks his head, straining. “Owl?”

Bucky says, “When you can hear more than me and the wind howling, you can hunt.” 

Clint growls at his meal. They both know when that’ll be. Bucky reaches across to run a thumb over Clint’s knuckles. “It’s not exciting, Clint. You’re missing nothing but stiff joints and cold balls.”

Clint shrugs at him, not even bothering to argue. 

Bucky knows why; it’s not about hunting, not about providing meat. Clint’s afraid that Bucky won’t come back one day, and he won’t even know where to begin looking. 

“I’ll stay closer,” Bucky promises. He's glad Clint can't hear the way his throat clicks with his lie. “We can stop using as much meat. Less fresh, more o' that dried out leathery stuff.”

Clint still remains quiet, even as he gathers their bowls and cleans up.

-

“Do you remember Christmas?” Clint asks a few days later. 

True to his words Bucky has been staying closer. Closer-ish. Close enough that he's back before the sun goes down. He’s gotten lucky a few times; an entire rabbit herd, a few half-starved harts. 

A dog he’d cleaned so Clint wouldn’t mourn it. 

“Kinda,” Bucky admits. Clint nods a little. He has that far away look he gets, when ever Bucky admits to remembering a time before barren landscapes and empty cities. Bucky doesn’t push. He waits patiently. 

“Tell me.” Clint says quietly. 

Bucky has not once denied him. He’s not sure if it’s nostalgia or guilt or a simple need to give Clint everything. 

“I hated it,” Bucky tells him plainly. “I did, but it wasn’t all bad,” he adds before Clint can interrupt. “I guess I didn’t hate Christmas so much as… everything else. All the shops in Brooklyn would start decorating so damn early. Everything smelled like cinnamon and nutmeg- like those brooms that kept making you sneeze a while back. They played the same like, sixteen cheery tunes on a never ending loop.”

Bucky pauses a moment, trying to remember any of them. He hums a few lines, something somber but powerful. He can’t remember any words. “There was a lot of debate about if it was a religious thing or not. ‘Cause of Jesus and Santa.”

Clint snorts. He shuffles to the padding Bucky’s lying on, and curls next to him, tugging at one the arms pilling Bucky’s head until Bucky dumps it on his shoulders. 

“That never mattered to me an’ Steve an’ Becca. We mostly cared about having to work extra hours and smile at jackholes. But Ma and Ma Rogers would make us peppermint cocoa and spiced sausage balls. We’d go out and pick the ugliest, scraggliest tree and throw tinsel all over it.” Bucky drifts for a moment, eyes almost seeing thin, bare branches bowing under glittery strands of red and gold and silver. “Tinsel was just these strings of shiny stuff. Paper thin threads that got all over everywhere. It was nice though, ‘cause when you put the lights on, these strings with tiny bulbs, everything would shine and dance.”

Clint makes a noise, some kind of gasp in his throat. Bucky strokes fingers over his elbow and continues. “Becca would make all these paper snowflakes and cut out reindeer and build giant gingerbread houses. Back then, it was a bit easier, cause they’d cut the metal shapes to cook house parts for you, and give you frosting. Give you sweet cream that was a little thick, made a nice glue. She always made two houses. One she could dress up all nice an’ one me n’ Steve got to wreck. ‘Cause you put all sorts of candies to make ‘em look like actual houses.” Bucky grins at the memory. 

“Then we’d get presents,” he adds. He thinks there used to be more, but these are the parts he remembers.

Clint is quiet beside him for a long time. Long enough that Bucky almost drifts to sleep. “Can we do Christmas?” Clint asks shyly. 

Bucky leans up on his elbow to stare at him. Clint has his eyes closed, his mouth soft, but his fingers are twisted into his shirt and the hollow of his neck is a brilliant, desperate red. 

Bucky kisses him there. “Okay.” He says against his cheek, against his ear.

He wants to asks how Clint learned about Christmas. Why he wants to do this old world ritual. 

He doesn’t. Because it’s a painful reminder that Clint is younger than him. Not by enough to matter out here, but enough not to hold memories of before. 

“Okay,” he repeats, mostly to himself. Clint smiles, rolls so he can tuck himself further into Bucky, and falls asleep easy, the careless way he does.

-

Neither of them really know what happened. 

Bucky doesn’t think anyone really does. Clint doesn’t care much. 

Clint went from starving with vicious people, to starving less with Bucky. He’s said, more than once, the end of the world was the best damn thing ever. 

Bucky thinks he’s a moron.

But Clint hasn’t asked about the Christmas thing again. Bucky knows he hasn’t forgotten- he’s seen the books, tucked into Clint’s ‘no snooping!’ bag. Privacy in the small hovelhome is limited. The bags are sacred spaces. 

And he’s heard and felt him slip out of bed too soon to work on secrets.

Bucky’s been thinking about Christmas. Little images full of warmth that seep from the cobweb crevices of his mind.

Steve, juggling oranges. 

Becca, stringing popcorn. Eating more than she strung.

Ma, and a turkey, minty rosemary and thyme choking him in the kitchen, 

Ma Rogers and snow in his coat and presents wrapped in comics.

Bucky can’t give Clint his lost childhood. He can’t give him a future beyond survival, or an explanation for the brown, empty rock they’re on. He can’t even really give him friends or a family.

He can’t explain why they woke up one morning to a decimated population, to a world gone still, to fires that still rage and ice that don’t thaw. 

Clint woke up, Bucky woke up, and people had dropped. No warning. No cause. 

No cause anyone left alive could parce out anyway.

Bucky can give him Christmas though. Some bastardized version of a Holiday that means shit now.

Bucky thinks, presents, and he goes. 

-

Clint looks up when Bucky slams into their home. He’s pack is full. Clint frowns. 

Bucky dumps the bag at his feet and schleps to the dying fire. “How do you survive.” He demands, throwing logs on viciously.

Clint gives him a toothy grin as he digs through the burlap sack. “Good will.” He finds tins of yellow and orange, soft, exploded, kerneled things. Six spools of thread. Good thread. Several jars of sweet, sticky bread paste. 

He also finds two very large, mismatched socks. He holds them up and waves them.

“Stockings.” 

“I can see-”

Bucky tilts his head back, neck popping, long hair dangerously close to the growing heat source. “No, it-” he bites his cheek the way he does when words aren’t working. “Used to hang ‘em on a mantle. Stick ‘em full of treats. Small gifts like lip cream and oranges and wooden toys.”

Clint’s eyes light up and he stares at the grungy cotton. 

“Used to make special ones, paint them all nice,” Bucky grunts. 

“No paint,” Clint informs him. “But we got sour juice we ain’t gonna drink.” Survival isn’t worth it, sometimes. Not when old, fermented prune juice is the answer.

Bucky gives a lazy shrug and grabs a large basin to fill with snow they’ll melt. Together, they dip the socks in various juice laden hot baths. 

The colors come out horrendously, as neither of them actually know how to dye old fabric. But the blotchy, moldy looking things are still beautiful, still more vibrant then the frozen world outside. There’s no mantle, and they can’t risk a fire, so Bucky finds sharp knots in the wood and punctures the socks to hang them on the splinters.

They don’t have bread, but Bucky found stale crackers they smear the sweet fruity paste on. 

“Used to be pies,” Bucky says wistfully. “Used to stuff thick pastry crust full of fruits and sugar and spices and bake ‘em.” 

Clint holds up a cracker. “Like this better,” he announces. “More filling less breading.” He smiles when Bucky barks out a laugh. 

-

“What do you remember from before?” Bucky asks Clint. He’s currently wrapping Clint’s hands up. Strings of blood tinged popcorn are snagged against the walls. 

Clint pops a stale piece in his mouth, sucking the fake cheesy flavor of it before spitting the soggy mass into a growing pile of absolute grossness. “Hay and horse shit.”

Bucky frowns. “I’m serious, Clint.”

“So am I,” Clint says. “I don’t really remember anything. Not the way you do. Not from before. I do remember waking up, and the sun was already high. And I thought I was in trouble. But nobody came for me.” 

Clint isn’t quiet often. Even when he’s busy, when he’s occupied, he’s a series of disjointed hums and comical grunts. Now though, he’s as silent as the world around him. “I waited for several days from someone to come for me. Drank water left from bathing. And then it got cold and I started to walk.”

That’s always where he stops the story. He never talks about how he made it from Indiana to Bucky, somewhere in Pennsylvania. How a half-deaf kid of about six managed that long on his own in a land with nothing. 

Bucky’d found him, crying in a coffee shop, holding a sick kitten. He’d been worried Clint was hurt. 

Clint had held out the kitten and cried harder. 

Bucky hadn’t ever told him what became of the thing. 

Clint had never asked. 

“Do you miss it?” Bucky asks anyway. At first he thinks he asked too quiet. 

“No.”

-

Their home smells like too many spices and sour fruit juice and fire. 

And popcorn. 

Strings of it fall everywhere, the socks hang limp from their wood knots, and Bucky hates that all he has foodwise is cans of pumpkin pie filling and beans, but he does what he can. 

Clint finally comes out from behind the curtain he hung two days ago, eyes bright and a clacking blanket in his lap. 

“Gotcha a thing,” he beams. He’s…

Sometimes he’s so young Bucky can’t breath. ‘Cause Bucky wasn’t too much older, but every handful of years matters.

“Lemme see.”

Clint carefully unwraps the blanket, and pulls out a sharp octagonal shaped thing. 

It takes Bucky so long to understand, Clint’s face begins to fall. “They’re kinda dumb. S’pose to be paper-made.” 

He starts trying to put it back, but Bucky grabs his wrist. He takes the delicate snowflake and holds it in his hands like it’s blown glass. “It’s,” he chokes on the words.

Clint produces a bunch more. Some, carved from a single piece of large bone, and others, fragments poorly twisted together. They’re beautiful and asymmetrical and ridiculous.

“Becca used to cut ‘em from paper, ‘n Steve would draw intricate ones with so many patterns. Ma had one she got when she was little made of glittery stones,” Bucky tells him. “But ain’t none of them as pretty as this.”

He kisses Clint on his stupid, shy-blush face. Kisses him, with the bone-flake carefully cradled between them. Bucky is already trying to figure out if they can afford to cut the barb wire fence up some, so he can hang these like stars from the ceiling.

He already knows they won’t be able to take all of these with them. Space, delicacy, impracticality. All sorts of reasons they should leave them behind when they go.

He also already knows which pieces he will absolutely find a way to keep.

-

They don’t actually know what the date is. The date hasn’t mattered in well over two decades, when people finally realized seasons happened when they felt like it, and calendars were already probably wrong.

As such, when Bucky wakes up six days later and the wind is screaming and snow is coming down so hard their floor is coated with it, he declares it Christmas. 

Clint bounces around, dumping dried meat and dried vegetables and dried herbs into a boiling pot of water. He produces what Bucky thinks might be an actual honest to god potato, withered but trying valiantly to sprout into the mixture.

“Where’n’da hell d’ya get that?” Bucky demands, holding Clint's chin to make sure he got the words. 

“Places,” Clint says with his eyes bright. 

Bucky isn’t sure if Clint understands how amazing that hunk of starch is, but he thinks it’s hope. Bland, mushy hope in a boiling pot of dried salt, but hope nonetheless.

Clint also hands Bucky a bundle of cloth wrapped in shreds of fabric tied into what might’ve been a bow. Bucky opens it carefully and he doesn’t cry. But he definitely shuts his eyes as they burn. It’s a blade. A beautiful, black thing, no rust and so sharp. The handle is heavy but balanced, and Clint hands him a leather sheath he only half wrapped. “Found those in a locked case out in that large house outside the woods.”

Bucky wonders if that’s where the potato came from too, before deciding he doesn’t care. Clint, the little goblin collector that he is, has also managed to find jars of lip balm, thick socks painted with pumpkins, a scarf the color of roses, and a coat made of leather. Real leather. The coat is too big, even for Bucky, but it’ll fit nice over his shittier coats. 

“I don’t got as much,” Bucky begins. But then stops himself. He got what he could, and that’s what matters. He hands Clint a small, trash wrapped thing and watches him open it. 

Clint’s eyes are puzzled but excited as he holds up a jagged scrap of leather, cut from unusable boots. Bucky banged the hook eyelets into a buckle of sorts, and made a flat disc-shaped lump of metal to hang from it. “Can carve a name on that,” he tells Clint, pointing to the disc. 

“A name?” Clint asks.

Bucky slinks off to his own ‘no snoop’ sack and reaches in. There’s some shuffling, and he hisses, but then he produces a lump of fur that he immediately hands to Clint. 

The mutt has half and ear and a grey eye, and fur the color of piss-mud. ”Her voice box ain’t functional, but she’s a damn good hunter.” he grunts. He'd found her two days ago and keeping her a secret was a goddamned nightmare. Only Clint's hearing and her silent voice had made it work.

Clint is barely paying him any attention, cooing over the thing and stroking her wet nose with his fingers. 

“She can’t sleep in our bed,” Bucky cautions when he catches Clint's shimmer-dancing eyes. 

Clint ignores that openly. “Katie,” he says suddenly. 

He looks hard at Bucky and his eyes are blue flames and his skin is flushed red and he says, “I don’t remember why, but Katie seems like the name of a real strong, smart girl.” 

Bucky reaches out to stroke her floppy half-ear, and Kate immediately tries to gnaw on his thumb again.

“Katie-dog,” Clint sighs dreamily.

Bucky snatches his hand back and bares his teeth and growls at her. “She hates me,” he grouses. “I rescued her from the freezing pit and she hates me.”

“You’re intimidating,” Clint tells him. 

“I saved her,” Bucky retorts. 

“You won’t even let her in the nice, warm, bed!” Clint cries. 

Bucky can tell he’s already lost that argument. 

Still, he’s fuller than he remembers being in a very long time. There are fragments of rusty metal glowing in the light of the fire, making bone almost look like glittering, light filled snowflakes. Clint shifts to sit in his lap, curl against him, babbling nonsense to Katie-dog who yawns real big and falls asleep in the crook of his arms. 

Bucky is happy. Content. 

He knows in spring they’ll need to shuffle on. Find somewhere with more animals, more vegetation. More homes and stores left unlooted. Maybe go down south, go west, see if potatoes are the only things coming back to life. Maybe they’ll run into strangers, or find people long thought lost. Maybe they’ll find no one forever, and it’ll be them three alone.

Either way, basking under bones, warmed by Clint and the pup, Bucky feels gentle and safe and full of hope.


End file.
